DV Info Net - First foray into long form documentary making

There were a some remarkable film-makers over here who made an award-winning two hour feature documentary I had the luck to watch over the shoulder for much of its process.

They shot 80+ hours of oral history on 16mm film, graphics plus aquired a wealth of archive stills.

The interviews were structured to a limited extent but it very much was cinema verite and spontaneous.

They did a "paper edit" in that everything in the audio tracks was transcribed with film edge numbers also printed in an edge column. From what I recall they also marked up and listed events in the oral histories which were common, marked up and listed keywords which might serve as cut points across interviews, then set about cutting up their printed pieces of paper and assembling.

Once they had that skeleton, then they started cutting film workprint and soundtrack on a flatbed. This was before the modern miracles of Adobe CS6, MS Word and the like. So much organisational effort was desirable before taking to the workprint with a cutter and splicer. Once they had an assembly then they set about trimming and pulling it in tighter.

They got it down to about 2 hours and 10 minutes. They wrote a narration and recorded the voiceover narration plus a visual introduction of the narrator and a few throws to the narrator in person.

At that point the editor brought in another editor to make the hard decisions and cull that which could be culled that the original editor did not have the heart to take out. They got it down to the two television hours - just. It worked.